This is a book where the premise is very familiar to me. Strangers marooned somewhere and left to survive. There are numerous tv shows, and books, of the same genre out there. But this one did not seem so familiar once it really got going.

The question here is what would happen if you were left to survive after an apocalypse? Would everyone get on with each other, would they manage to forage enough to keep themselves alive, and would they all make it through to the end?

All of those questions are answered in a brilliant way as you continue through the pages. I recommend this to anyone who loves survival shows or books.

Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing a copy.

A captivating and addictive book to read. I literally couldn't put this book down and was hooked right until the last minute. Amazing idea for a reality tv show and although not the first time someone has written about one going wrong, this was really well executed and written. Look forward to reading more by Sarah Goodwin.

I love a locked room mystery so when I came across Stranded I was intrigued. Eight strangers are chosen for a new reality TV show to live and survive on a remote island with limited resources. What could possible go wrong? Eighteen months later a woman turns up in a fishing village asking for help. She’s one of the original eight, where are the others?

This was a pretty interesting book that ticked a lot of boxes for me. An isolated setting, an air of mystery as well as the added bonus of social interactions and human conflicts. A bit like Lord of the Flies. This was a slow burn with mounting tension throughout the book that I really enjoyed. One of those books where you can’t help but picture yourself in a particular scenario and ask “What would I do?” 3.5⭐️

Lord of the Flies - Reality TV Edition. Eight strangers are chosen to survive on an island for one year, but what started out a a co-operative community turns into a nightmare as personalities clash and supplies begin to run out.

This book was impossible for me to put down. I stayed up until the wee hours of the night engrossed in the story. I watched as our group of contestants slowly devolved from civilized people to selfish factions. Goodwin managed to make the story wild but also believable.

A great read, especially if you like survival stories and reality TV drama!

SURVIVOR meets LORD OF THE FLIES in STRANDED. That is undoubtedly how STRANDED will be described. But that is way too simplistic a description of the book. Goodwin is amazing at creating a sense of time and place. And at first I thought her characters to be too stereotypical, but those ideas were banished about halfway through. As we follow the "reliable" narrator through her tale, we wonder "are her perceptions correct"? Or is she truly a person with character traits that justify at least some of the other characters' actions (not going to go further - it would be a spoiler). I ended up totally fascinated.

Suspenseful and addictive once the story gets going. Read it in a single sitting. Excellent use of characters and plot to keep the reader hooked.

Oh my gosh! What a brilliant book! I was hooked from the start and found myself unable to put it down. I read it in one afternoon! The characters, the setting and the storyline were all believeable and you quickly find yourself immersed into the story. Thank you for letting me read this.

This is a gripping, twisty page-turner you won’t want to put down.

Eight people arrive on remote Buidseach Island off the coast of Scotland to participate in a realty style TV program. They’ll live there alone for an entire year with only a two-man camera crew who remain in an ‘out of bounds’ area solely in case of emergency. The participants are responsible for everything: food, shelter, latrine—even charging the solar-powered camera they’re supposed to wear everywhere.

It’s billed as a social experiment: How will a few strangers survive if the world as we know it ends?

Eight people means different skill set and different personalities, and some of those personalities are going to clash.

Working relationships deteriorate quickly. Is anyone surprised? In normal life, all it takes is getting cut off in traffic, or being belittled by a coworker for some people to turn savage. In no time, this challenging adventure descends into a Lord of the Flies fight for survival.

Eighteen months later, one single woman shows up in an isolated fishing village, desperate to explain what happened and why so many died on the island.

The author’s skill is in isolating Maddie, her narrator, and generating sympathy for this bookish, home-schooled, socially awkward introvert, while, at the same time, making us distrust her. Maddie is resourceful and has bush foraging skills to admire. The many descriptions of the island is fauna botany were vivid and authentic. I really felt like I was there with Maddy seeing her struggles.

But she also harbors a disturbing paranoia that hints strongly of an unreliable narrator, and that part of the tale keeps us guessing. We feel her growing isolation, anger and fear of the other participants on the island.

Stranded is a gripping debut that kept me on the edge the entire time. Great book with a surprise ending. You’re going to want to read it in one sitting. Look for the release next month.
Thank you to Netgalley and Avon for the opportunity to review it in advance.

I actually enjoyed reading this book! Liked the fact there was a timeline and we read different exerts from the past to the present of the telling of the story. It’s makes want to read to the end to find out what happens at the end.

Maddy is a young woman who has signed up for a survival reality TV show. She, and seven other participants, must survive on a deserted Scottish island. However, it is only eighteen months later that Maddy is found. Now she wants to tell her truth about what really happened on this island.

I had a little trouble getting into the story, but once the protagonists were on the island, I was hooked. I wanted to know what really happened to Maddy and the others.

As I read this book, I had an uneasy feeling growing inside me but only because the characters were detestable and unfortunately so close to reality. I can imagine real human beings behaving like that in similar conditions and that’s where the uneasy feeling came from.

This is Sarah Goodwin’s talent: you read this book as if you were on the island, but from an omniscient point of view, even though Maddy is the narrator.

Most of the time, I can tell how a book is going to end. I couldn’t with this one and I liked it.

Stranded is a really good thriller.

I give it 4/5.

I recommend it.

Thanks to NetGalley, Avon Books UK and Sarah Goodwin for an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

What happens when strangers embark on a reality television survival experience? This book dives deep into the daily realities of living on a deserted island, as well as the mental challenges of a group of strangers forced to rely on one another. I’d recommend this book to fans of reality shows, survival books, and thrillers. The writing is atmospheric and packed with escalating tension from beginning to end.

Stranded by Sarah Goodwin

A group of people take part in a social experiment for a TV show . They get taken by boat to a remote Scottish island and have to exist on a few items brought with them and their wits.
Wow ! I cannot say just how much I loved this book. I've read lots of books this year , and this has to be up there with the best of them.
It centres on slight misfit Maddie , but she has the determination to survive.everything that comes her way , and the people who are out to harm her.
I can imagine this book as a film , or even better a TV series.
Excellent does not give it the credit it deserves. READ IT .

Loved this terrifying, pacy thriller set on an isolated island off the coast of scotland. Like a cross between Love Island and Lord of the Flies with a dash of The Beach and Blair Witch, this is a perfect autumn read - but definitely not one for when you're home alone!!!!

Stranded has such a unique plot! The book is dark and twisty from the start and I had to keep reading to see what was going to happen!

Wow ! Wow ! Wow! I definitely lucked out when I was approved for this instant favorite ! Stranded is a thrilling psychological thriller that will pull you in from the first chapter !

Sarah Goodwin is a creative genius and I have become a super fan !

I would highly recommend this book to all thrill/mystery book lovers

Eight strangers get dropped to a remote island for a survival television show. Eighteen months later a woman turns up on the mainland disheveled. What exactly happened on that island?
The writing had me hooked from the very first pages, intriguing and exciting, I finished this in just a day. even though you know the lead character Maddy survives, you are still totally taken into the story and gripped wanting to find out exactly what happened to the other contestants and how Maddy escaped.
Written from Maddy's point of view you really get to know her and get a real feel for her character. and I became really fond of her, both because of her background and her sheer determination to survive.
The story was really well researched and felt so real! This added to the atmosphere and and tension and you really felt like you were on a deserted island and made it all totally believable.
The pace was perfect, slowly building the background to begin , with changing timelines to hint at the action to come, making this a real page turner.
One of my favorite reads of the year so far, atmospheric and exciting, the setting was perfect and the characters so well written that they made this feel like such a menacing situation. I loved the hint at the supernatural this just brought an extra magic, mythical and creepy edge. It truly was a thrilling read.
Thank you to Netgalley, Sarah Goodwin and Avon for the copy, I look forward to exploring more by this author.

What an amazing story of survival. Touting the harrowing tale of an ostracized and misunderstand woman and the groups herd mentality that ultimately fell them. The concept was interesting and the setting was easy to imagine as it was rich in detail. The emotion was palatable coming off the pages. Couldn’t get enough. Well done!

Thank you NetGalley for this arc

Compelling Suspense…
What happened on the beautiful, remotely situated Buidseach Island? From the very first page the reader is drawn into this chilling, atmospheric and completely compelling suspense and will absolutely need to know. Well constructed read with a solid sense of place and well drawn characters, tense and intriguing.

I wish to extend my sincere gratitude to NetGalley and Avon Books UK for this advanced copy of Stranded, an unbearably tense story of a descent into cruelty and madness. It is a breathtaking, dark, haunting, and claustrophobic story.

As a fan of intense survival shows on TV in hostile environments, such as Alone and Naked and Afraid XL showing danger, hunger, sickness, injury, and group tensions, I thought I would find Stranded a book to keep me riveted to its pages, and I was not disappointed. This book carries the premise of these TV shows to its extreme limit.

Eight participants are dropped off at a remote, uninhabited island off the coast of Scotland to participate in a year-long reality show. They must build a shelter, hunt, fish, and forage for food. There are also 2 cameramen situated at a distance to be approached only in an emergency. Each contestant has a solar-powered camera, and cameras are placed at strategic positions in trees for the 'entertainment' of the viewing public. The four men and four women participants start by dividing up the tasks. This begins to fail due to a self-appointed group leader, selfishness, greed, laziness, and conflicts over how to proceed. They experience violence, shocks, and human behaviour reduced to its darkest element. Rumours and lies abound. It shows how a bully group evolves and chooses its target. Their need to survive causes a breakdown in morality and turns them into savages. When the return boat fails to return at the end of the year, they are stranded. The human drama becomes sinister and terrifying.

Eighteen months later, a dishevelled, haggard woman shows up on a mainland settlement with a gun and asks a homeowner to call the police. The story switches back and forth in time from events on the island to Maddie in the present. She is being interviewed for her TV account of what happened. Is she a reliable narrator? We are told early that of the ten on the island, only three survived, and there is going to be a trial. Who died, and by what means?

Maddie is the story's predominant character. She is introverted, socially awkward, and was home-schooled by her overly protective parents, who discouraged her socializing. She has no friends, and her parents recently died. She is depressed by her lack of personal development and hopes the year's experiences will lead to self-improvement and friends. When she challenges some of the leader's plans, she is considered disruptive, and when not speaking up, she is regarded as timid and weak. Maddie becomes the target of the group's scorn, is bullied, and eventually unjustly exiled. There is a desire of the others to conform to the leader's lies and hostile intent. Maddie is the object of blame for wrongs for which she had no part. Her expertise in identifying edible and poisonous plants is a loss for the group.

Her situation, while exiled by herself, is mainly in a gross, suffocating hiding place. She remains the target of theft and violence by the group. Her suffering and determination to survive are disturbing but mesmerizing.
Recommended to anyone who likes gripping and disturbing survival stories. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

This book follows our main character Maddy as she sets off to a remote island for a reality TV show. The show is described as what would happen if the world ended and people were forced to survive on their own instincts, forming alliances and working together for their own benefit. At first, things are going fine, soon the group starts to divide and outsiders are quickly separated. What was a reality TV show starts to turn into a fight for survival.

Our main character Maddy is a 29 year old pharmacological botanist, and is surprisingly unlikable for a main character. She’s a social outcast trying to fit in while also dealing with the horrors of her personal life outside of the show. However, as she fights to survive her resilience and drive is admirable. While I can’t say I ever liked Maddy as a person, she’s an interesting main character, a refreshing take from the many perfect heroines often seen in novels. She had flaws, and that’s what makes her so interesting to read about.

This novel kept me on the edge of my seat. While it was a bit slow to start, things started picking up about a quarter of the way through the book and I couldn’t put it down. It switches from the past, where Maddy is on the island, to the present, where she is undergoing an interview about what went on there. I think this was a really smart way of maintaining the reader’s interest. I wanted to know both what Maddy was going to say in the interview and how she survived on the island. It was like two mysteries unfolding at once. Another mark of a good thriller, I never saw what was coming next in the book, whenever more information was reveled I was shocked. In books like this I often can guess what is going to happen next and the motives of the characters, but every time I thoughts I knew what was coming around the corner in this book I was wrong.

The other characters in this book were interesting, though their personalities could be a bit shallow. Other than one character aside from Maddy, don’t go into this book expecting major character development or complex backstories. The author’s style of writing was enjoyable. It was detailed and descriptive without going overboard. This made for an enjoyable read without any unnecessary flowery language.

Overall, this was a thrilling read with an unpredictable plot. I couldn’t put it down.

I would recommend this to: Anyone looking for a good survivalist thriller.